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Just using Gimp as a reference: I don't think the fonts are actually "loaded" on startup, but they do have to be "discovered" to generate the list of fonts to choose from, and that does take a few seconds, more if there are newly installed fonts.

Then again, MS Paint has a text tool and that loads instantly.

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I think a list of fonts could be built in a background thread when the text tool is used/selected by first time (the most common case is that the user will not use the text tool). This list could be cached and when the text tool is used again in other session, the cached list is loaded while a background thread search for new fonts.

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Just for reference, there are plans to convert the Edit > Insert Text into a real interactive tool, where you select a box (which will be the bounding box for a text paragraph) and you can start writing text with the keyboard, and the context bar show the font options (font family, font size, etc.)